Strawberries and Snow
by Vivienne Grainger - Bleach
Summary: Ichigo and Rukia vs. Byakuya - the grudge match of the century!  Sex, violence, earthquakes!


Why don't they, why don't they, why don't they? Well, herein they do. Come find out why and how, and what Byakuya does afterward.

Tite Kubo's, not mine, not for profit.

* * *

The fusuma at Byakuya Kuchiki's back moved aside, and hearing that, he meticulously cleaned and set aside his brush. "Nii-sama?" said Rukia's voice. "You sent for me?"

"Yes. Please come in, Rukia." His servant arrived with tea, and bowed himself out, shutting the fusuma as he went.

Rukia sat seiza before Byakuya as he poured two cups of tea. "I have had an offer for your hand in marriage," Byakuya said to her, handing her one. Her shocked-wide purple eyes fastened onto his face as she took it, automatically. "Had you been born into our family, your marriage would be my decision, and you would expect me to make it. As you were adopted, I find it best to consult you."

He had arranged a few marriages before this - cousins and other Kuchikis of complex relationship to himself - and every single one of those young women had asked only one question: "Who?"

Rukia, however, was made of sterner stuff. "Would I have to give up being a Soul Reaper?"

"I would imagine so. Few noble wives have any career outside of managing the home and family."

"Nii-sama, I do not wish that."

Byakuya's eyebrows would have disappeared under his kenseikan, were Kuchiki eyebrows allowed to do any such ill-bred thing. "Hmm. Well, I can convey your reservations, and see what they think. –Why have you not asked me who proposes this?"

Rukia considered this while the steam rose from her tea. "I suppose," she said finally, "because no one has engaged my heart. And at any rate, I prefer to continue my profession, so it does not matter."

Byakuya supposed that was the truth, but he was not going to allow it to deter him. "Do you remember Irojiro Hebonshi?"

Rukia's brow furrowed in concentration. "I believe so. We met at your Winter Ball." Her memory flipped up a picture of a young man, blond, so fair as to have blue lips when he entered the house after a short walk from his own home in winter weather. Gawky, tall, shy but not paralyzingly so. Wore kimono well. Had exquisite manners. "I don't remember anything awful about him."

Byakuya almost smiled. "That's good. It is his clan which has offered to make this dynastic match."

"I see. What would I have to offer the Kuchiki clan instead, to offset the benefits marriage to Hebonshi-san would confer?"

Gods, she learned fast. "I will have to consider that, Rukia, as I have not contemplated your marriage so." Byakuya thought for a moment. "I shall also put it about that the offer has been made. That will procure other offers, I am sure, so that I can give you a better answer."

She bowed her head, but he had seen the dismay in her eyes. "I shall await your information, Nii-sama." She finished her tea, set the cup aside.

"Rukia, one moment."

Byakuya studied the young Soul Reaper before him. He had never realized it before, but when she was in his presence, she assumed the persona of submissive younger sister. Someone, probably his cousin Ini, had taught her how to do that very well.

But the younger sister was an act. Her true character, much stronger and more self-willed than any properly-brought-up younger sister would ever dare to be, lay in wait below the surface.

He had no doubts that his power was superior to hers. He also had no doubts that if he put a foot wrong here, he would suffer for it for decades. A dynastic match which did not meet with Rukia's approval, far from being a source of power to the Kuchikis, would suck him dry of energy and patience, no matter what monetary benefits it conferred.

Because he might be superior in power, but no one was superior to Rukia Kuchiki in either deviousness or stubbornness.

And then he thought, unfortunately, of Ichigo Kurosaki.

"Rukia ... is your heart engaged elsewhere?"

He had sufficiently surprised her that she actually raised her eyes to his, open wide. (Part of the act, Senbonzakura whispered.) "No, Nii-sama."

"Rukia, if that has happened, in my eyes it is sufficient reason to decline the match, although I do not wish to do so just yet." He actually smiled. "And who knows, if you have settled your fancy elsewhere, and I make your availability known, that family may be emboldened to make an offer I can accept. There is nothing to be gained by silence."

"Nii-sama, I merely wish to continue as a Soul Reaper."

There was a very long pause in which a number of thoughts, and a strong feeling of exasperation, ran through Byakuya's mind. "Very well. Rukia, in order to evaluate your - er, your worth - on the marriage market, I must insist that you wear only furisode off duty."

Rukia paled. The furisode, its long swinging sleeves declaring to all and sundry that she was of marriageable age, had never been required of her before. "Yes, Nii-sama."

"I shall send the tailor to you tonight when you return from duty. Please choose at least six daily-wear furisode, and three sets of three more in gradations of formality, for social functions. I shall instruct the tailor, and he will guide you in your choices. That's all, Rukia."

She bowed, but remained on the floor in front of him. He sighed. "Something else, sister?"

"Er, today, Nii-sama, I will be sent to Karakura. I'll be there for two weeks."

"I see. Well, then, I shall choose the furisode."

She knew his taste to be exquisite, and herself to be doomed. "Thank you, Nii-sama."

The fusuma slid shut behind her. Byakuya Kuchiki carefully sought out a handkerchief, and used it to blot beads of sweat from his aristocratic forehead.

* * *

"You've been in a lousy mood for two days. What's going on?"

Rukia had landed in Karakura, reported to Ichigo Kuchiki's bedroom closet, and then had no reports to deal with, no summons to answer, for forty-eight solid hours. She'd gone to school with Ichigo, come home to read manga, dealt with goat-face, enjoyed Yuzu's company as they cooked and washed dishes together, had karate lessons from Karin which were as painful as they were instructive, spent endless hours arguing with Ichigo, and not one of these things had been sufficient to stop her mind from circling the fact of Byakuya's matchmaking on her behalf.

Endlessly, persistently, obsessively. She had surprised herself by being able to solve fourth-order quadratic equations while replaying in her head every interaction she could remember with Irojiro Hebonshi.

Simply put, she hadn't had enough to do with Hebonshi-san to know whether she could endure his company over the long haul. And marriage in Soul Society would be a very long haul indeed.

Oh, she knew of some couples who solved the problems of personal indifference and/or mismatch by living separately ... but Rukia knew she couldn't settle for that. She wouldn't allow herself to be forcibly married, either, which gossip had it had happened to a few girls in the Kuchikis' circle. Those young women had come from impoverished families, however, and been married to much older wealthy men. Surely the Kuchikis had no need for that?

She got out of her head. Ichigo had half-turned in his desk chair to face her as she sat in his closet, reading.

"Nii-sama is considering offers of marriage on my behalf."

Ichigo Kurosaki's jaw dropped. "What? He can't do that!"

"Oh yes he can. Furthermore, he's letting it be known that I have received an offer, and he's ordered a bunch of furisode for me to wear. When I get back, I expect I won't have anything else in my closet."

Rukia was, in fact, perfectly correct about this ... so long as you didn't count her shikahoushou.

A portrait of Ichigo at this moment in time would have utilized three o-shapes, two small and one large, a nose, and a lot of orange triangles for his hair. Nothing else would have been needed. Even Rukia could have drawn him accurately. "But Rukia! Marriage? You're too young!"

Rukia shook her head. "Not by Soul Society standards."

"But ... you'd have to stop being a Soul Reaper."

"Maybe." She smiled at him. "You know as well as I do that rules are made to be broken."

Ichigo Kurosaki, rebel only when others' reaction to his orange hair forced him into it, tried to wrap his mind around this. "But ... he's such a traditionalist, Rukia. I can't see him finding someone for you to marry who wouldn't mind that. Can you?"

She folded away her manga. "Actually, he was being very clear with potential suitors that I'll stay in the Gotei-13. He's also going to tell me what I'd have to pay to get myself off what he calls 'the marriage market' with the Kuchikis."

Ichigo blinked. "But that's tantamount to slavery!"

She shrugged. "The boys are marketed the same way. I'll have a sizeable dowry, being the Kuchiki heiress, so only a few will offer for me, and the usual procedure would be to choose the one who brings the most benefit to the Kuchiki clan for my husband. That's what I'll have to match, to free myself."

Ichigo looked at her for a very long moment. "Well, then, marry me. That'll stop all of that nonsense."

"Yeah ... but then we'd be married."

He shrugged elaborately, turned back to his Japanese homework. "It was just an idea."

She could tell that she'd hurt his feelings quite badly. "Not a bad one, either, Ichigo. Thanks. But I don't think that's the best solution for either of us."

* * *

Quadratic equations. Japanese homework. Chemistry (which Rukia deeply enjoyed, as she could find quite a number of ways to make things go boom, and claim later that her ignorance was to blame).

The cell phone rang at the end of lunch period. Ichigo hovering, Rukia answered.

"I see. Yes. Tomorrow at two. Very well." She snapped shut the telephone. "There's been an Arrancar sighted in Yatsushiro. We leave tomorrow at two."

"Yatsushiro! That's all the way to the south!"

"Two words," Rukia said, smiling at Ichigo. "Bullet train."

* * *

The train ride was uneventful, the wait to transfer at Osaka short, the Japanese countryside speeding by outside the window beautiful.

Rukia and Ichigo disembarked at the clean, well-designed Fukoka station, and walked out into sunny weather, a light breeze blowing.

Right after that, everything went to hell in a heartbeat.

Both were thrown to the ground. Ichigo rose and flung himself across Rukia, knocking her back down, and held onto her. Only then did she become aware that it wasn't he who had knocked her down the first time: the earth itself was doing quite the shimmy.

The soil under them ground to a halt. Ichigo bolted up, pulled her with him. "Come on, we've got to get high!"

"What?" Rukia didn't disobey, scrambled after Ichigo as fast as she could, Kon whining, "Come on, stop squishing the stuffed toy!" in her backpack. Kurodo, along for the ride with Rukia, snapped, "Shaddap, Kon!"

"After earthquake comes tsunami! We want to be high when it hits!"

They joined a stream of people that became a trickle, a torrent, a wash, a wave: all of them steadily climbing north and west.

Ichigo picked up a small boy who was having trouble keeping up with his parents, themselves carrying their twins, and carried him; Rukia did the same, a few moments later, for the boy's elder sister.

They climbed in silence, except for the frightened cries of the children they carried.

Well into the forested areas above the town, the crowd slowed and stopped. The two shinigami returned the children to their parents.

They turned in time to see a large wave come ashore. It wasn't pretty.

Make a toothpick model of a city, including tiny boats in the harbor, and a miniscule bullet train on toothpick tracks leading away from the island over a slender arc of bridge.

Then put it in a ten-by-ten foot square waterproof container, and turn a fire hose on it.

After that, raise one end of the container, so that the tide first recedes, and then comes back ashore, this time with all the debris that the first wave created suspended in the water, and behaving like small millstones: grinding to bits everything encountered, floating or still attached to the earth.

Don't watch.

"Kami," whispered Ichigo. "All those people ..."

Rukia was as white and shaken as he was. But the extra hundred and thirty-five years of life she had experienced reared their collective head: "It's awful. But Ichigo, we've got a job to do, and there are going to be people who died in that. We need to get the Arrancar taken care of."

"What?" He came back to the forested area where they stood with other lucky survivors. "Yeah, you're right." He pulled out his cell phone, to let his father know he was all right: no service. "Let's get away from here."

An hour's brisk hike brought them to a deserted town near the summit of the mountain. Concrete buildings had survived largely intact from some unknown date, but the wooden structures were fast declining.

No single person answered when they shouted. Ichigo pulled out his cell phone again: this time he had service, but all circuits were full. He left the thing on, stuck it back in his pocket.

Dutiful son and elder brother that he was, he didn't want Karin and Yuzu, or even goat-face, to worry.

Rukia turned on a tap. Rust flowed for a full minute, but then the water cleared. "We could stay here," she said, "since we've got water."

"We only packed for a day trip," Ichigo objected. "Unless you're particularly fond of raw pinecones?"

"Baka. I packed a lot of ramen."

"How will we cook it?"

"I carry a pot."

Ichigo blinked. "That's awfully ... prepared ... of you."

"In my last life, I was a Boy Scout." Rukia opened her pack; Kon's butt was stuffed into a tiny saucepan at the bottom. She pulled him out with a pop, and he rubbed the recently-confined area of his body. "Ow. Can't you be careful of the stuffed toy?"

"Shut up or we'll eat you," Ichigo said absently, and Kon bolted back into Rukia's pack.

Kurodo, having had enough of Kon's company, crawled out and sat quietly at the end of the large concrete room they had decided to use for a base, head swiveling back and forth. Looking out for snakes, most likely.

Rukia's backpack contained ramen, strawberry Pocky, four cans of grape Fanta, White Rabbit milk candy (it was, after all, _Rukia's_ backpack), and three packages of ajigonomi, which are various kinds of crackers combined with dried fish. Ichigo patiently separated out the dried fish and tossed them into the ramen water, along with some unused packets of dried vegetables used to flavor ramen, left over from some other lunchtime. Rukia then used kidou to heat it.

Ichigo ate four packages of ramen, but no more than his share of the dried fish and reconstituted vegetables. Rukia reckoned, but did not say to him, that at this rate if they didn't get down to some kind of civilization in three days, he'd either starve to death or end up eating Kon, polyester stuffing and all.

All circuits for the cell phone were still busy.

They curled up on the floor, elaborately separate from one another, jackets pulled over themselves to provide what warmth the coats could, and went to sleep until nightfall.

* * *

Ichigo Kurosaki woke on a cold stone floor for the second time in his life. The first had been in Kisuke Urahara's basement playground, when his arms had been bound behind him, and the memory of that flushed all the shreds of sleep from the boy's brain in a nanosecond.

He stood up, rattled, picked up his jacket, put it on. Rukia, ten feet away, continued to sleep.

Ichigo found a tree and watered it. The sun was creeping down into the ocean. Rescue efforts were being carried out in the lowlands, and on the ocean. The bullet train was still on its tracks, but he and Rukia had slept through whatever rescue efforts had been made on behalf of its passengers.

He got a call through. Yes, they were all right. Were Yuzu and Karin okay? No earthquake where they were? No, there had been no tremors in Karakura. Good. He and Rukia would be home tomorrow or the next day.

Old goat-face, known to the world at large as Isshin Kurosaki, said to his son, "There's a cash card in your wallet. Use it. I put it in there for emergencies. I put something else in there for emergencies, too."

"Aw, geez, Dad, not more rubbers."

"They get brittle after a while. You have to replace them about every six months."

"Dad," said Ichigo, "you tell Karin and Yuzu nii-chan said hi, okay? We'll finish up here and be back Sunday or Monday. Depends on how the trains run." He severed the connection before he reached right through the phone and broke his doting father's nose.

Rubbers. Yeesh. Ichigo sometimes felt like the only person in the world who did not constantly have sex on his mind. Not to say it was never there; apparently its occasional and recurring presence came with being an adolescent human. He wondered about fifteen (or its equivalent)-year-old shinigami. Then he wondered who he could ask. Renji's name cropped up.

Well, yeah, he could always ask the baka. If he wanted to know that bad.

He could ask Shuuhei Hisagi, if he wanted to know a lot more than he asked about.

He could ask Hanatarou. Might be fun to watch him blush.

He could ask Byakuya Kuchiki. -No, he, couldn't.

He could ask Kenpachi Zaraki. That one bore thinking about. Maybe not acting upon, but thinking about.

Having exhausted the possibilities, Ichigo decided to remain uninformed, and returned to their concrete accommodations, to find Rukia having a nightmare.

He squatted in front of her, said gently, "Hey, Rukia."

She continued to twitch and mumble. Ichigo put a hand softly on her shoulder, and the blue-purple eyes snapped open, still in dreamland for a few seconds.

Then sense returned to them. "Ichigo. I was dreaming about the tsunami ... it really happened, didn't it."

"Yeah. It did. They're doing rescue work down in the lowlands."

"Good." She got up, yawned, stretched. "I better see a man about a dog."

"Dog?" said Kurodo, nervously.

"It's just an expression," Ichigo said, as Rukia went to find the elusive canine. He explained it to the Mod Souls, who so patently didn't get it that he gave up.

On the other hand: "Kon," Ichigo said slowly, "I'll say this just once. If I find out you've been forcing yourself on Kurodo while Rukia and I are away, I will kick your ass from here to breakfast. Clear?"

"Would you really do that to poor innocent Kon?"

"Absolutely," Ichigo said firmly. "Because of you, my reputation at school is completely trashed. I owe you one, and if you get fresh with her body Rukia will owe you one too. I'll just give 'em both to you at once. Probably cripple you for life."

Kon gave Ichigo a dark look. Ichigo returned it.

Dog-viewing complete, Rukia returned, and the alpha and would-be alpha males desisted in their pissing contest.

She didn't comment on the atmosphere, only said, "Let's just leave our stuff here. Kurodo and Kon can keep watch for us."

"Okay," Ichigo said.

"I'll be happy to," Kon chimed in eagerly. "Kurodo'll help!" He tried to throw a comradely arm around the rabbity - rabbitish - plushy.

"I know karate, fool," Kurodo growled, and threw his arm off. "Don't touch me."

* * *

The night was young when they caught a twitch of movement through trees.

"You see that?" Ichigo said.

"Yes. Let's go see if it's our friend."

It didn't seem to be. Sighting them, it roared and slavered, which should have been enough to frighten any newly-dead soul out of its mind, and went for Rukia.

Rukia had long ago knocked into Ichigo's head that _she_ got to do her thing with any Hollow that attacked _her_, and _he_ could have his fun with any that attacked _him_. Only if one was wounded was the other allowed to come to his or her aid.

It wasn't necessary here. The Hollow hadn't much power, and it was mostly a warm-up exercise to purify it.

"There," Rukia said, landing in front of Ichigo. "Now let's go see what else is around here."

Ichigo was a city boy, used to hunting in Karakura. He had only briefly been in Hueco Mundo, and its man-made underground caverns, and he had spent very little time in the uninhabited areas around Seireitei.

Here, no one had set foot for a couple of centuries. Darkness, deeper darkness, random shafts of moonlight showing only denatured moss and limbs, crunchy instability underfoot, along with things that went bump and whoosh and squeak and scream in the night, unsettling to someone not used to the machinations of the dark. And at this rate, Rukia realized, narrowly avoiding an owl, the Hollows would get lost in the crowd.

"Let's go up," she said.

Ichigo didn't argue, just went. She smiled, and followed him up into the clearer air.

Lights had been rigged in the earthquake-stricken area, and work there went on. They watched for a second, rescued and rescuers alike made ants by distance. The ocean facing districts resembled an anthill poked with a stick. Farther inland, it was calmer, but the hospitals were visibly busy, even from their distance.

Rukia shrugged, and turned away. "Come on," she said. "Let's make it safe for those who died down there."

Not many had, Japan being very much aware of the tectonic instability of its islands, and prepared for earthquakes. They could see to the southeast that Mount Aso was still smoking, though.

By using a sort of teepee structure of search (up high to find a Hollow, back down in a straight line to dispatch it, up high in another straight line to search again), the pair managed to account for six Hollows. The Arrancar they had been sent to find was not seeing visitors that night.

"I wonder if we're in the right place," Ichigo said. "We could walk down the mountain again."

"Right now they're swamped down there, people hurt, people dead, families separated from one another, and I'd rather not add to the burden," Rukia said. "We'll go down in a day or two. Before our food runs out. –You've still got the tickets home, yeah?"

"Yeah. My dad told me he put a cash card in my wallet for emergencies. Whenever we find a restaurant or an ATM, we're good."

"Are you hungry?"

"I'm always hungry. Right now it's not too bad. How many ramen did you bring with you?"

"I don't know. A while ago I put two cases of twenty-four in the pack, but I've been using them off and on."

Ichigo did a fast scan around their lair. Lights were few and far between, and led inexorably down to Fukuoka. "Let's give the anthill two more days to stop seething," he said. "Then we'll go back. No reason we can't hunt down there in the meantime, is there?"

"Yes. We'll do that tomorrow night - good idea, by the way. For now, let's see how Kon and Koroda are doing."

* * *

Kon was, as always, ecstatic to see Rukia, merely okay with Ichigo's presence. "Where's Koroda?" the boy said, sitting up in his own body.

"On the roof," Kon said. "He's afraid of snakes."

Ichigo snorted, and Rukia set off to find her body. The boy rummaged into her backpack, took out six packs of ramen, and counted nineteen left. Three more meals.

Ichigo divided up the fish-and-crackers into four portions, did the same with the dried vegetables. Ran the rust out of the tap. Ignored Kon's extensive complaints. Drew water for breakfast. Wondered which mushrooms were edible, wondered if grass gave you enough calories to be worth eating (it doesn't; it actually requires more calories to break down than are available from it), wondered if there were any streams nearby large enough to tickle fish out of, wondered how you tickle fish, wondered what the hell was taking Rukia so long ...

On that thought, she arrived, Korodo riding one shoulder. "Is that breakfast? Great! Let me kidou it."

She must have been hungry enough to kidou the hell out of it. The pot began to boil immediately.

* * *

The next night they went down to Fukuoka. It was still a mess.

Japanese building codes are strict, and most modern buildings had withstood the earthquake with little damage. The older areas of Fukuoka had been very hard-hit, however. The red-light district was near the ocean, and had suffered from the attentions not only of the initial earthquake, but of the subsequent tsunami as well. As a result, many scantily-clad female Plusses crowded the area.

"Oh my kami, cover yourself!" Ichigo said to the first one they encountered. She had a wonderful body, and glorious curly red hair, although you could crack walnuts on her chin. She displayed the body in a set of black lacy bra, panties, and garter belt. Black seamed stockings and black high-heeled shoes completed the outfit, and a lace shawl topped, but did not conceal, it. The whole thing did more for Ichigo's libido than he was willing to admit.

Rukia smiled at the Plus, and performed for her the office Ichigo, his hands over his eyes, could not. He did peek long enough to see her sashay through the gate.

The next one was one of those who don't know yet that they are dead. "But ... Mr. Ikida is coming! He is my best client, almost my sugar daddy!"

Ichigo turned bright red again. Rukia had the thought that this was the best possible sex education for him, although it was kinda mean. Should they move on? No. Forty more Plusses crowded the area. Suck it up, Ichigo.

This woman was dressed in a kimono which ended mid-thigh. Ichigo surprised Rukia by taking the woman's hand, and saying gently, "I'm sorry, but you don't understand what's happened to you. You've died. Mr. Ikida won't be coming. It's time for you to leave this place."

The young woman stared at him, open-mouthed. "I can't be dead! Oh ... " the focus of her eyes became inward as she remembered the last moments of her life. "Oh ... I guess I am dead."

"Are you ready to move on?"

"I ... yes, I suppose so, since Mr. Ikida won't be coming."

They worked their way through the rest of the Plusses, and moved on into the main area of Fukuoka once the red-light district was clear.

Japan as a country has a long history of planning well around environmental issues - in the era of the shoguns, forestry management was initiated. The country applied the same thought and care to the issue of earthquake-damage management. Most of Fukuoka was untouched; the toll from the earthquake here was much lower than you would find in, say, Chicago, or Birmingham, Alabama. And there had been a few murders and a few natural deaths as well.

Well before sunup, they faced their last Plus. This one was an old woman, wrapped in a heavy brown coat that was surely too warm for the season? Nonetheless, she shivered as they approached the park bench, under a low-hanging tree, on which she sat.

The old woman made a gesture of appeasement, one palm up.

"We aren't going to hurt you," Ichigo said, and knelt in front of her.

Rukia admired that. He reassured the old woman by assuming a lower posture in front of her.

Ichigo really was a nice kid. She had seen proof of it before, Rukia realized ... somehow, this simple action on the boy's part touched her. She followed suit, going to one knee as Ichigo had.

As the pundits have observed, no good deed goes unpunished. The Menos Grande which was using the old woman-shape as bait loomed up out of the tree, and snarled, "Two of them! Two Soul Reapers! I'm so lucky! Lucky, lucky, lucky, me!"

Guilty of sexism, it made the tactical decision to hit Ichigo first, as of the two he was most likely, according to its thinking, the greater threat.

Ichigo had time to rise from one knee, draw Zangetsu, and use it to deflect the Menos' first strike, using some appendage that resembled a lobster claw. That sent him backward, skidding, and the Menos slashed him shoulder-to-knee with a second arm, claw-tipped by a razor sharp talon.

Rukia neatly dissected that appendage at its nethermost joint, threw the stricken Ichigo over one shoulder, and shunpoed away. The Menos roared and bellowed, but her desperate guess was correct: it was too large to have the speed necessary to keep up with her, even so burdened as she was with the semi-conscious Ichigo.

Rukia did not go directly back to their hideout. She found a shepherd's or hiker's hut, or anyway rude shelter, consisting of three walls, a roof, and a Smell.

When she laid Ichigo down on the packed-earth floor, his head lolled back. A very bad sign; he was out.

She spread Ichigo's kosode and shitagi open, and drew in a breath. The Menos had opened the flesh over his chest, and even chipped a rib on the way down. His belly wasn't, thank kami, deeply slashed: some blood, no guts. His thigh down as far as the knee, though, had been neatly dissected to a depth of a half-inch or so, but as the slash was roughly on the outer third of Ichigo's skinny leg, the wound had missed the major arteries and veins.

Healing and demon arts are not so very far removed from one another. Like many shinigami, Rukia had more of the second than the first, but healing, compared to the demon arts, is uncomplicated. It benefits directly from the power the shinigami has to put behind it - up to a point. Isane Kotetsu, back at the beginning of Rukia's training, had showed all of her classmates how to heal, and how far to push the patient's body in healing. Rukia got to work.

At some point she became aware that Ichigo had recovered enough consciousness to be watching her. She did not allow this to disturb her concentration.

When she finished, she sat back into seiza, dropped her hands, and sighed.

Her patient surveyed himself, took in the damage to his shikahoushou, and turned bright red. "How much did you see?"

"Ichigo, come on. I didn't see anything. Your hakama's been shredded so that I could judge the injuries without undressing you." _But I liked what I did see. Creamy white skin, no freckles, hard muscles ... I don't like seeing you hurt._

Wait. He'd said something. What had he said?

"... go back hunting tomorrow?"

Rukia sighed. Bloodthirsty little boys. "You'll be able to tell after you've had a day's sleep, probably."

"You okay?"

"Didn't touch me. I clipped it one, but that's all."

He shoved himself up to sit with his back against one unsavory wall. "Well, we know where it is now, at least."

"Yeah. Listen, the sun is just about up. When you feel ready, let's go get Kon and Korodo, but keep down low, so that it's harder for the Menos to see where our base is, okay?"

"Shunpo through the forest?"

"Can you do that?"

"Renji's been teaching me."

"Oh kami. Let's just walk. It'll be faster."

* * *

"I have been out of contact with Rukia for three days," Jyuushiro Ukitake said. "I sent her to Karakura, then asked both her and Ichigo to do some work in Fukuoka ... you are aware that an earthquake struck that city?"

"Yes," said Byakuya Kuchiki. "The entire island of Kyushu got quite badly shaken up. There's a lot of work to do there."

They were in Jyuushiro's office, drinking tea in that calm little outpost over the waters of his koi pond. The white-haired taichou (formerly to Byakuya's fukutaichou) topped up both their cups, said, "Yes. I sent the resident shinigami to a southern part of the island before the quake struck, as there was an outbreak of bird flu in a southern city. The local there was overwhelmed."

"So Rukia and the ryoka boy are there alone." Byakuya took one, but only one, of Jyuushiro's favorite crackers. He was quite fond of Jyuushiro, and had long ago worked out that one cracker was mandatory. Byakuya didn't particularly like Jyuushiro's favorite crackers, but, for the sake of friendship, he punctiliously ate one every time he was asked to tea.

Jyuushiro had a macaroon; the tuberculosis would burn the calories for him. "I wish you would not persist in referring to Ichigo Kurosaki so, Byakuya. He has proven to be a valuable ally since that first ... misunderstanding."

As a man who had firmly stood on the wrong side of that misunderstanding, Byakuya could not easily defend himself, and knew that. In addition, his feelings had changed. Had he the opportunity to do it over again, he would not oppose Ichigo Kurosaki. So he said, "Perhaps you are correct, Jyuushiro-sama. At any rate, Rukia and Ichigo were there together when the earthquake struck?"

Jyuushiro recovered from the shock of hearing Byakuya admit, however obliquely, that yes, he might have been in the wrong, and said, "Yes. They had originally planned an overnight trip, and now communications, and transport, in that area are so disrupted that we cannot contact them. Rukia's cell phone is not working."

Byakuya sat with one hand around, one hand under, his tea. "Do you feel the situation is grave enough to request a tracer from Twelfth Division?"

"I like working with Mayuri Kurotsuchi so little as you do, Byakuya, but I cannot see any other way to proceed, short of going there ourselves. What think you?"

"It would," said the Captain of the Sixth Division, also head of the Kuchiki clan, "be inconvenient for me to leave at the moment, with Renji in the Living World, and some few members of my clan attempting to be up to no good. I fear we must appeal to Kurotsuchi." He helped himself to tea, and refilled Jyuushiro's cup while he was at it.

"I'll send the Hell butterfly," Jyuushiro said, and enjoyed one of his favorite crackers, to compensate himself.

* * *

Rukia slept the morning away, and rose to find Ichigo, large dark circles under his eyes, up, and pacing.

"Didn't you sleep?"

"Couldn't. I'm worried about that Menos."

"It got a lucky shot in, Ichigo. That won't happen again. We know it's there now."

"It might have another lure."

'"It might. I think from now on we'll approach any soul together, not individually."

"It still bugs me."

Well, it would. Rukia knew that Ichigo, like Renji, didn't like losing. More accurately, he violently disliked being placed in any situation in which he had to admit that there were limits to his power.

"Last night ..." she began.

He stopped pacing and turned to face her.

"Last night was the result of inexperience, Ichigo. That's a Menos, which has been around for a couple of centuries at least. You can't hope to outwit one of those with fifteen years of life experience."

He stared down at her, half-glowering.

"I know you didn't want to hear that, but it's the truth, Ichigo. It's what we have to deal with."

He turned to sit facing her with his back against a concrete pillar. "Yeah, I know. I just - I can't think how to get around that thing."

Suddenly, Rukia felt as protective of him as she had last night, when she laid him down on packed earth in a shepherd's hut, and his bright-orange head had lolled back. "That isn't something you have to do all by yourself. I have some skills you don't, just as you have far greater strength in battle than I do. We'll work together, and figure it out." Rukia smiled at him. "Probably on the fly. We do that quite well."

"Or we'll die together."

Rukia folded her hands in her lap. "It's always possible that will happen."

"... I hope it doesn't happen to you." His voice was so quiet that he could barely be heard.

"I hope so too. But if it does, I'll die knowing that you did everything you could to stop it, Ichigo."

"But you'll still die."

"Probably not before you." Rukia raised her head, and smiled at him. "You're like Renji in that. You don't quit until you're dead."

He snorted. Rukia got up, saw the man about the dog, returned, and to Ichigo's surprise sat down next to him. "Put your head in my lap, Ichigo."

In Japan, this gesture carries far greater weight, is thought to be much more intimate, than it is in the west. But he did it, after a long moment's hesitation.

Rukia stroked Ichigo's unruly hair gently back from his forehead. He closed his eyes. While she did this, she began building up energy. When she felt his body relax, when the moment was right, she said, "Ichigo?"

His eyes opened, focused on her. "Yeah?"

Rukia Kuchiki pushed the energy she had summoned into him, and Ichigo Kurosaki went out like a light.

* * *

"Cheap shot!"

"Okay, so it was a cheap shot! It got you the rest you needed!"

"Yeah, fine! Still a cheap shot!"

"There's that Menos! Now will you _shut up_ about it being a cheap shot!"

"For now! But you haven't heard the end of this, Rukia!"

Ichigo went ahead of her, his bright hair a flame in the night, and to her complete horror, screamed, "Hey, you! You Menos! I got something for you!"

The Menos roared its reply, raising another crab's claw and a thing that looked like an octopus' tentacle topped with a tiger's claw. A third limb, this one with a hook at the end, also manifested out of the roiling undifferentiated muscle that was this Menos' body.

Ichigo, diving, sheared the claw into two dangling useless pincers, sent Zangetsu plunging through the claw-tipped tentacle, shredded the limb ending in a hook, and struck the gigantic creature squarely between the eyes, cleaving its head neatly in two.

Black threads of it raveled away into the midnight air for a good five minutes before it was completely gone. The thing had been _huge_.

Ichigo landed in front of Rukia. "_There_. Can we go now? Or do you want to knock me out again?"

Rukia sheathed Sode no Shirayuki with a thump. "Yes, we can, and don't tempt me."

"Fine!"

"_Fine_!"

"Well, _fine_, then!"

They went.

* * *

Kurodo nudged Kon. "What's up with those two?"

"Not the faintest idea," Kon said. "I mean, I've seen it bad between the two of them, but never like this. Never like it is now."

The two shinigami had not spoken to one another since returning from patrol late the night before.

Rukia had just kidoued the last of the ramen into edibility. Ichigo had glared at the hapless soup throughout, which probably heated it faster.

They were eating silently, their backs to each other, and you could have cut the air between them with a knife ... after you thawed it with a blowtorch.

Rukia rinsed the pot, and replaced it in her backpack. She looked at the plushies, and made a "get in here" motion. Kurodo and Kon looked at one another, and raced over to the pack, scrambling in among its diminished contents. Once Rukia buckled the flaps down, each plushy was able to stick one arm and his head out.

Rukia, Koroda, and Kon were ready to go.

"Dammit," said Ichigo, fastening the straps on his own pack. He turned to Rukia, put both hands on her shoulders, gathered her into his arms, and kissed her like there really wasn't going to be any tomorrow.

Probably, better times have existed for an aftershock earthquake.

Rukia had been kissed before by a number of people. The earthquake surprised her; that usually didn't start until the festivities got a little further along ... she opened her eyes in surprise about the same moment that Ichigo opened his.

Lips still locked, they stared at each other.

Rukia moved her head back, and said, "It's an earthquake. Let's get out of here."

Ichigo moved his head back, and said, "Uh. Yeah."

They were perhaps ten feet out of the concrete building when it gave up the ghost, and crumpled down into its own foundations.

"Shit," Ichigo said, watching this, "you can kiss, girl."

Rukia, watching the slow-motion disintegration, replied absently, "You aren't so very bad yourself."

Ichigo swung his pack up onto his back. "Well. Let's get down to Fukuoka, and see about getting home."

Along the way, they stopped quite a few times to test out the kissing. It confirmed its former quality, but caused no further earthquakes.

* * *

Isshin Kurosaki's cash card worked its magic; Ichigo and Rukia were able to rent a room at a cheap motel on the outskirts of Fukuoka. The desk manager turned the stink-eye on the pair, but did not refuse to rent them the room.

Ichigo wanted to stay in a better motel or even a real hotel - best yet, a ryokan, the traditional Japanese inn - but the recent disaster meant that the Red Cross had rented most of the available space in Fukuoka for the newly homeless, and he and Rukia got the last available room. This place was only a cut or two above the anonymous capsule hotels found at airports.

The room was nine-tatami, three on a side: not quite ten by ten. The tatami themselves had been pounded quite thin by the passage of many, many feet. The bed sagged in the middle, and the washing facilities were very old.

Despite all of this, it was scrupulously clean. Otherwise Ichigo, pretty scrupulous himself, would have moved on. Rukia, less sophisticated in the ways of the Living World than he, might not have.

Showers, after three days in the mountains, were wonderful. Getting back into dirty clothes was not.

Bed, chair, dresser. No sofa, as the hotel was indeed that cheap.

"I'll sleep on the floor," Ichigo said, his hands in Rukia's hair, and his lips recently removed from hers.

"No, you won't, we'll share the bed with a sheet between us," Rukia said, and obliterated the distance between their lips. She also had some ideas about obliterating the sheet, maybe later.

"I really don't ... want to ... stop," Ichigo said, with some difficulty. "But ... I'm starving."

"Could we get ... some clean clothes ... after we eat?"

"Uh, yeah. Sure."

"I ... don't want to stop ... either."

Ichigo's stomach, or perhaps Zangetsu, gave a loud grumble of frustration. Rukia parted from him just before her stomach, or perhaps Sode no Shirayuki, seconded that thought.

* * *

When you go to an American fast-food restaurant, you have a choice of brown things. French fries are a pale tan, the majority of various sandwich components are brown, mostly (except for ketchup and pickles), and the available drinks are various shades of brown (except for the purple, orange, and green ones).

They sat down with their brown meals. Rukia's was chicken-centric, with a chocolate milkshake to follow. Ichigo had opted for two quarter-pound beef sandwiches and two bunches of French fries, with a brownish-pink and an off-white (or very very pale brown) milkshake to follow.

Yum.

It wasn't quite like watching Renji Abarai eat, Rukia thought. Renji achieved gustatorial communion with whatever it was that he ingested. Ichigo, on the other hand, while properly appreciative (he had said "itadakimasu" upon receiving their tray from the counterperson, which startled the uniformed teenager), just fueled the body in the shortest time possible.

Except for that first hamburger. Ichigo had picked it up with both hands, sunk his teeth into it, murmured, "Mmmm," and chewed the bite he had taken with his eyes closed for, oh, a century or two, before swallowing it, the pronounced Adam's apple of youth bobbing up and down to accomplish this. Then he had opened his eyes, blinked at her, said, "Aaah ... that was good," and repeated the entire process. After that, he switched into fuel-uptake mode, but for Rukia, the damage had been done. She had seen Ichigo Kurosaki eat.

She could easily fall in love with him, had probably done so already, the petite shinigami realized. And then what? What would her nii-sama's reaction be? She nearly snorted salted French fries out of her nose, picturing it. They'd be lucky to survive, either of them.

It was too bad, she thought, that she hadn't considered Byakuya earlier. Thoughts of him might have stopped the landslide of feelings she was having now ... or maybe not. At least now, she had a very good reason not to accede to a dynastic match.

She was still Ichigo's commanding officer, though, and that left things very difficult indeed.

* * *

"I'm almost done." Rukia frantically shuffled herself out of one pair of pants and into another. Three shirts hung on their hangers in the dressing room; the fourth, neatly folded beside her own clothes, she was going to buy, along with two packages of underwear, the top half of which had had to be tried on. A package of socks had not had to be tried on. Her shoes lay beside her folded clothes, one fallen over. Two other pairs of jeans had been tried on and neatly re-folded.

Ichigo had not tried on anything. Had found his favorite brand of pants, his size, favorite color, that was that. Underwear for men was much, much simpler than it was for women; shirts followed the pants pattern. Socks? Pfft. Buy the first package your hand falls on. It had taken him five minutes.

All of Ichigo's female classmates could attest to the fact that Rukia had been very fast, if they had been there to see it. It had taken her only fifteen minutes to skim the racks in her size, yank out the things she'd be seen dead in, and retreat to a dressing room.

Half an hour later, here they were.

"For kamis' sakes," Ichigo grumbled, arms folded across his chest and his own bag of clothing dangling from one hand as he waited in the hall outside, "if I'd known it would take this long, I'd've bought you a bikini and a can of spray paint." He was also having, um, reactions to thinking about Rukia changing her clothes, and being reflected in the dressing room mirror while that happened, three feet away from him. Ichigo, in short, was very uncomfortable, and what part of his brain had thrown up the bikini-and-spray paint image he didn't know. What part of that brain had then sent it out of his mouth he would, if he ever identified it, cheerfully donate to Mayuri Kurotsuchi.

"Shut up, Ichigo!"

Kon, inside Ichigo's backpack, said plaintively, "No, continue, please."

* * *

"I can't find her cell phone, and I can't find her signature," Akon said.

The guy with the horns was seated in front of what looked like a human oscilloscope, because that's exactly what it was. Big, square, bulky; about the size and shape of an old-fashioned computer monitor.

Akon had calibrated it first to seek the electronic signal generated by Rukia's cell phone, and then to seek the reiatsu signature generated by Rukia herself. "They aren't in Fukuoka."

"Do you have the ryoka boy's reiatsu signature?" Byakuya Kuchiki said.

Jyuushiro Ukitake had sent him on his own to the Twelfth Division, pleading illness, and it was true that he was especially white today.

Byakuya did not know, would have been astonished had he been told, that Jyuushiro Ukitake (a man with the necessary courage in battle to be taichou within the Gotei-13) was terrified of both Fourth and Twelfth Divisions: the first because he had spent far too much time therein, the second because he had once seen Mayuri Kurotsuchi wandering the halls of Twelfth Division with a hypodermic needle of a size to put the fear of God Himself into God Himself. While Jyuushiro knew it was extremely unlikely that Kurotsuchi could advance any argument to any person which would justify sticking that thing into his, Jyuushiro's, hide ... he still preferred to play least-in-sight with Twelfth Division.

He wasn't afraid to get his injections if Retsu Unohana was on the other end of the needle, either. (Well, okay, only a little.) But who in their right mind would allow Mayuri Kurotsuchi to give them a shot? There could be anything at all inside the hypodermic: drain cleaner, plutonium, something that would allow you to beat all your opponents by spitting on them and turning them to jelly, something that would turn _you_ to jelly, last year's dryer lint made liquid, _anything_.

"Oh, they're together?" Akon did not see, and wouldn't have had to care if he had seen, that Byakuya's eyebrows drew down and together. "Why don't you give me a minute, then. I'll get his file."

* * *

Ichigo hung the last of his funky hand-washed clothing on the shower-curtain rod beside Rukia's daintier garments, one or two of which he was definitely _not looking at_, and returned to the bedroom.

Rukia was belly-down on the bed, legs bent at the knee and crossed at the ankle, watching television: or at least flipping through the channels.

He sat in the chair in front of the dresser. "Anything good on?"

"Mostly news. It wasn't a big earthquake, but it's about all they're talking about."

"Look ... can we talk about the kissing stuff?"

She looked at him in surprise, and turned off the television. "Sure."

He was silent for a few minutes, looking down at his feet. "Where's this going, Rukia? Can we still fight together if we like each other? I mean, you know, _like_ like."

"I don't see why we can't," Rukia said slowly, remembering Shiba Kaien and his wife. "There are married couples posted within the same Division in the Gotei-13. They manage to - to _like_ like each other and still be comrades-in-arms."

He raised his eyes to her face. "Is that all I am to you?"

"In the beginning, Ichigo, yes. But as I've gotten to know you better, I've also liked you more." She blushed, just a little. "I can't imagine being separated from you for any length of time."

The smile crossed his face like the sun illuminating the day. "That's good. I miss you when you aren't in Karakura. Wish you were there to talk to."

She smiled, and while rolling up into a sitting position, patted the bed beside her. "Come sit," she said.

He perched beside her as if imminent flight were a possibility.

"Wanna have sex?"

Ichigo turned bright red from hairline to collarbones; Rukia couldn't see any further down than that. "Urgh."

"Is that yes, no, or 'I need a minute to think about it'?"

"Urgh," Ichigo said again. Then he tore his eyes away from hers, swallowed, opened them again, and said, "Ummm ... yes?"

* * *

The phrase "fifteen-year-old male virgin" will conjure up for any male who has passed that stage reminiscences which cannot ever be made comfortable. Those lucky few whose virginity was removed at the age of fifteen will smile, but it is not a wholly pleased smile: being fifteen carries with it the primal energies of youthful masculinity, and the rash risk-taking of a yet-to-fully-develop cerebral cortex. And as a result, no brakes.

In addition, sex, all by itself, feels pretty good. Rukia, more experienced than Ichigo, had a pretty good idea of what would happen this first time around, and it did: Ichigo climaxed pretty much without having to think about it.

"Shit ... sorry, Rukia." He was head-down, holding her close, gasping.

"It's all right." She held him while the tremors ran their course through his body. "I like you, Ichigo. Just ... take it easy. We'll try again."

"When?"

"I don't know precisely. Ten minutes or so."

She never could recall, later, whether she saw the boy or the Hollow smiling at her.

Ask a man to have sex with you and you call the wild energies of the god the Greeks named "Pan" to your bedroom (hotel room, park bench, kitchen table). What the man does is only partially under his own control; the balance is Pan's doing. Pan thwacked Ichigo on the back of the head and he had a second orgasm just as things were going well for Rukia.

"Sorry ..." Ichigo groaned. She held him tightly, whispered to his collarbones, "It's okay."

When his eyes opened, she said plaintively, "Could you just ... keep doing what you were doing?"

Women are slower to arouse than men. Ichigo, having pursued things to their natural end twice, was now at Rukia's rate of speed. Third time was the charm for both of them, within seconds of each other.

They lay gasping in one another's arms, wholly spent, and very very pleased with themselves.

* * *

Akon had loaded Ichigo's information into the computer the oscilloscope was hooked to. He had fired it up, and watched the lines trace across his scan of the Fukuoka area.

"Whoa, that's a big spike ... got him."

Byakuya had watched incuriously. "Is Rukia with him?"

"I don't know," Akon had said. "Let me recalibrate for both of them"

Busy silence followed. Then Akon had said, "About ready ... whoa, that's another big spike!"

Bykauya had glared at it until it subsided. "Is he fighting Hollows?"

Akon had glanced at him, smiled very slightly. Akon said carefully, "It's one of several possible explanations. Okay, now I'm set for both their energies ..."

They had watched two spikes carefully crest, Rukia's in red a few seconds after Ichigo's, which was green.

Byakuya Kuchiki had then, without a further word, gotten up and walked out.

Akon waited until the door of the lab had swung to behind him, and griiiiiinned like there was no tomorrow. Man, did he _ever_ have a piece of good gossip.

Byakuya would realize several months later that his usual habit of seeing those beneath him socially as being incapable of causing any worthwhile trouble had not served him well in reference to Akon.

* * *

Byakuya Kuchiki's butler received yet another visitor to the Kuchiki mansion.

This one was nervous, young, and accompanied by his father.

"Byakuya-san, the Misu have arrived." His butler very properly bowed to him, and waited for instructions.

Byakuya sighed. He had received other offers for Rukia's hand after the Hebronshis'. This young man's would make it sixteen total.

And tomorrow, no matter how many of them turned up unannounced on his doorstep, he was leaving early for Fukuoka with Jyuushiro.

Not one of these offers, except the Hebronshis', had risen to the level of his expectations. No, they were not offering the prestige .. the contacts ... the ties ... the matches to Rukia's dowry he would have expected.

It worried him. As the head of the Kuchiki clan, Kuchiki prestige was quite firmly in Byakuya's hands, or lying heavily across his shoulders, however you chose to look at it. This lack of acceptability on the part of every suitor except one Irojiro Hebronshi was not doing the Kuchikis any good. Rukia should have been a prize on the marriage mart, Gotei-13 or no.

It couldn't, could it, have gotten about? What he had seen on the flickering - thing - at Twelfth Division?

Not normally an imaginative man, Byakuya ran through the scenario in his head: Akon, at a bar, entertaining a group of shinigami with the tale of flickering lights on that scope thing, as the scientist had called it. "And then they both peaked at once, and you know what that means!" Akon-in-his-imagination said, and made a very crude gesture Byakuya was somewhat surprised that even his imagination knew, consisting of making a circle of thumb and forefinger with one hand, and poking the index finger of the other hand through it.

Akon's audience-in-his-imagination burst into riotous laughter.

Oh, kami. Was that it? Had Rukia's - adventures - with that ryoka gotten about?

He could think of nothing else. He'd kill the boy, or see them wed. What else could he do?

He was not, of course, privy to Rukia's day-to-day interactions with other shinigami, nor with other members of the Four Noble Families. _He_ did not know that _she_ was known to be a handful, self-willed, quite self-disciplined, intelligent, determined, skilled in the management of others.

In short, no one anybody, except for Irojiro Hebronshi, wanted to attempt to govern and direct as the wife of a Noble Family member. Irojiro Hebronshi was enamored of Rukia precisely because he had met her once, and once only. You can sustain infatuation only on a very lean diet of contact. It sickens and dies of daily interaction.

Once that has happened, if civility between the two parties is to be maintained, it must be clearly recognized as desirable to both, as it becomes extremely hard work.

Rukia preferred to put that effort into the Gotei-13.

Irojiro had absolutely no idea what he was letting himself in for, although his father was making some headway in begging his firstborn son to allow him to withdraw the offer. Byakuya remained ignorant of this as well.

Byakuya, staring out his study window, sighed, and turned to go to his receiving room. He knew this family, liked the father personally, and would have to listen politely to an offer that was very likely to be both marginally insulting, and all they could scrape together. It would require him to send them away disappointed, but kindly so.

He had the skills to disappoint kindly, no matter how he regretted the necessity. Byakuya heaved another sigh, and allowed the public Byakuya Kuchiki to smoothly cover the private man when his butler slid aside the fusuma which sealed off the receiving room.

* * *

The public and the private Rukia Kuchikis were having no such dissociation. She and Ichigo Kurosaki were enjoying themselves whether their clothes were on, or off.

Of course you can make love in spirit-body, but it had not yet occurred to either that this might be a test to run. As night faded, they saw the first of the bullet-trains arrive at Fukuoka station, and adjourned to their motel room.

"Think we can get a train out of here today?" Ichigo said.

"Today or tomorrow, probably," Rukia replied.

Ichigo retrieved his gigai, went to get breakfast. Rukia showered, and like Ichigo, dressed in the clothing they had washed and hung to dry.

The manager's wife, peering out of the office window, saw two men in modern clothing approach the room they had rented to the teenagers.

Oh boy, trouble. She remained glued to the window.

Byakuya Kuchiki and Jyuushiro Ukitake had donned gigai to perform this little task. Once they were in Fukuoka, it took almost no effort to find Kurosaki's reiatsu. That Rukia's was in immediate proximity to the damned ryoka's was something Byakuya had not discussed with Jyuushiro, whom he knew could perceive it as well as he.

Byakuya was seething. Jyuushiro, who had been taichou to Byakuya's fukutaichou for a good half-century, knew the signs.

The motel room door thundered to Byakuya's knock.

Rukia, who was putting things into her backpack, turned in surprise. The opened door showed her -

"Taichou! Nii-sama!"

Jyuushiro's face held its usual gentle smile of welcome. Byakua's normally severe countenance was augmented by a frown of monumental proportions.

"Where is that damned ryoka?" he said, and pushed past her into the poky room.

"He's not here. He went to get us some breakfast," Rukia said, motioning taichou inside, and shutting the door behind him.

The room did not smell of sex, mostly because it had been a good ten hours since that activity had taken place there. Byakuya found himself relieved by that. He did not actually want to have to kill one of Rukia's friends.

He came to stand over Rukia, invading her personal space and glowering down at her. "Have you slept with him?"

Rikia, shocked open-mouthed, gaped at him.

Jyuushiro cleared his throat. "Perhaps, Byakuya, that question is best left for later?"

Ichigo chose that moment to return, bag of McDonald's in one hand and carrier with two cups of tea in the other. Byakuya pivoted, and his hand went to the place where Senbonzakura ought to be.

Ichigo did not miss that gesture. "Hello to you too," he said, and put the food down on the desk. "Give me a moment to get out of my body and let's go kill each other."

Byakuya's face of thunder deepened. "You admit that there is reason for us to do so?"

Ichigo glowered at him. "No, I just assume you've got your hakama in a twist and I'll find out later what your problem is! That's usually what happens with you, isn't it?"

Byakuya was taken aback, to the point that hope blossomed in his heart. "You haven't been sleeping together?"

Silence struck the motel room. Byakuya's face darkened again as it lengthened.

"Rukia, come with me. It is time for you to return to Seireitei."

Jyuushiro cleared his throat. "Actually, Byakuya, as her commanding office, I must ask that Rukia accompany me. Please get your things together, Rukia.."

Balked of his prey, Byakuya swung around to glare at Ichigo.

Ichigo ignored him, focusing instead on Rukia. "I'll see you later, then?"

She smiled at him, folding the last of her new clothing into her pack. "Yeah. Take care until then."

"You too."

Byakuya growled, but Rukia and Jyuushiro closed the door behind themselves, and left him in Ichigo's presence.

The two men glowered at one another for a few moments. Then Ichigo said curiously, "Really, Byakuya, what is your problem this time?"

Byakuya snorted, and flung himself out the door.

Ichigo, left alone, shrugged, and ate two complete breakfasts.

But then, he did not know that for a woman, being virgin upon her marriage was a great deal more important in Edo-period Japan than it is in the modern day.

* * *

"No, Byakuya. it was kidou!"

He snorted. "Really, do you expect me to believe that?"

Rukia had reported to Jyuushiro, and then, with a sinking heart, gone to the Kuchiki mansion. As she had half-expected, the butler had fielded her upon her first arrival, and shown her directly to Byakuya's study.

"Byakuya, my cell phone was inoperative" (because I deliberately left it on its charger at Ichigo's house) "and I needed to let Soul Society know we were all right. Ichigo has almost no experience of energy management, and none at all of kidou. He wasn't able to stay focused very long."

"The brat has bankai."

"Yes, he does, but if you label it 'energy management' he freaks out! We had to practice. The first time I didn't think we were successful. The second time we were, but he maintained his concentration so briefly I didn't believe we were successful in sending the beacon. The third time, I was finally able to focus and direct the energy, and Ichigo was able to stay focused as well."

Byakuya said directly, "Sister, if you find yourself ... indisposed ... from this trip, rest assured that I shall kill that ryoka brat."

Rukia was kneeling on the mat before him, with her eyes cast down and her hands quite properly on the floor to each side of her. "Nii-sama, you know I would not do anything to endanger relations between that boy and Soul Society."

Byakuya Kuchiki sucked the breath in through his nose. "I see. You may go."

When the fusuma slid shut behind her, he sent for his butler, and gave him insturctions.

* * *

Byakuya Kuchiki was not an expert hand-to-hand combatant for nothing. His first blow connected.

Ichigo Kurosaki shared this level of expertise with Byakuya, but was completely unprepared for the blow. He went backward in a cartoon loop, hit the floor of Byakuya's study, lay still for a long moment, and then slowly raised himself onto one elbow, the other hand going to his split lip. "What the hell was that for?"

"You touch my sister again and I'll kill you," Byakuya said, standing over him, one fist clenched.

No one except perhaps Hanataro Yamada would have recognized the handsome scion of the most powerful of the Four Noble Families. His brows were down, the patrician nose flared, the mouth a very hard line, and the grey eyes narrowed. The knuckle he had split on Ichigo Kurosaki's teeth began to drip blood. Someone good at perceiving reiatsu would have seen the steam coming out of his nose and ears.

Ichigo's first trip to Soul Society since the trip to Fukuoka was not beginning well.

Ichigo got hold of his temper, wiped his lip, and eyed the red result. "First of all, technically _she_ touched _me_. Her idea. Second, she isn't going to get pregnant. Old goat-face - I mean, my dad - has made me carry protection since I was twelve. –Is that why you asked me to come here, so you could knock me down?"

"No, kami damn you! Now it must be made known that she is not virgin! You've taught her to like sex! The Kuchikis are shamed!"

Ichigo went from his side to both elbows, threw back his head, and laughed.

Byakuya pivoted into ready stance. "Ryoka, provoke me until I raise my sword to you, and you will not survive!"

Ichigo got his feet under him, and took hold of his temper. "Byakuya, don't push it. Or I'll give you a piece of information you _really_ don't want, teme."

The word "teme" is a very rude form of address, quite often translated into English as the succinct "you bastard." Bastardization and the good advice stopped Byakuya short, his hand on the hilt of Senbonzakura in her stand. "She wasn't - "

"No, she wasn't. _She_ taught _me_. What did you expect, Byakuya? Rukia grew up by herself, without help, without anyone to turn to except Renji, and he couldn't always be with her, in Rukongai. And even after you adopted her, for a lot of years, _you didn't bother to protect her_."

Byakuya's hand dropped from his sword. The plumes of oto-nasal reiatsu vapor decreased, and went away. "I am shamed."

"So you should be, teme."

"You will not speak so to me."

"I will when you've earned it." The boy dabbed at his lip again.

"Yes, very well." The noble flounced (no other word for it, thought Ichigo, watching) over to a dresser, withdrew a small square of embroidered linen from a drawer, offered it to Ichigo. "I apologize for striking you."

"Thank you," said Ichigo. He ruined the perfectly good handkerchief, put it neatly down on a nearby table. "Now, would you like to start over with a conversational opening, or do I get a chance to clock you one?"

Byakuya gave him a shamefaced grin. "Think what Rukia will say if she finds we have been fighting over her."

Rukia actually proved to have little to say to them, perhaps because Byakuya, bowing to the inevitable, had the sleeves of her furisode shortened, so that they were no longer furisode. Irojiro Hebronshi was told that the Kuchiki clan could not accept his offer for Rukia's hand as her heart was engaged elsewhere. (Byakuya did not tell the Hebronshi that Irojiro's rival was the entire Gotei-13.)

This suited Rukia well. She forgave Byakuya.

Byakuya Kuchiki forgave Ichigo Kurosaki some years later.

Ichigo Kurosaki didn't bother to carry grudges, and thus had no need to forgive Byakuya Kuchiki. But that was because here and now, Ichigo Kurosaki said calmly, "Oh, it'll be worth it," and punched Byakuya Kuchiki square in the mouth.


End file.
